Sunday, 16 June 2013

Why I Also Can’t Stand Clare Balding

In a pique of leftish rage, I found myself over at The New Stateman’s website looking to see if they had any imminent plans for revolution. I was in a mood to build barricades and wave Soviet-era pitchforks. An article on The Guardian had been sitting so shit pretty in its self-satisfied pose of middle-class dilemma (‘my children are obsessed with their iPads… I called the nanny!’) that my working-class boots were demanding protest action. Thankfully, there was a place to inject my fire without it leaking out into civil disobedience.

The title of Will Self’s newest essay (‘Why I can’t stand Clare Balding’) turned my anger into a satisfying whoop of delight. It promised so much, especially since Self is one of the best essayists around as well as one of grouchiest men I’ve ever witnessed beyond the context of my own bathroom mirror.

Now, the point of this post isn’t just to highlight an essay I think you should read. I also wanted to explain the reasons why I also can’t stand Clare Balding, especially since Will Self left such large gaps of loathing unaddressed. Perhaps he began to feel some compassion towards the woman in the process of writing his essay or perhaps he doesn’t know her well enough to dislike her entirely. Well, I have no such qualms about peering into the shadows of my deepest loathing and I hope you don’t have any qualms about peering there too. If, for any reason, you do have warm place in your heart for dear sweet Clare, then I suggest you read no further.

For instance, Will doesn’t mention Clare’s earnestness. No presenter fixes their eyes on the camera and lowers their voice quite like Clare Balding. One moment everything is bright and breezy, the next she’s driving you through a long dark tunnel and that sound you hear is your own breath being forced back down your throat until it makes you gag and turns into a sickly retch. When she speaks like that, in that drowning droning monotone, everything she tells you takes on the importance of biblical revelation. ‘Now this dog has FOUR legs. Now that’s pretty standard for a dog but you can sometimes get them with THREE legs. THREE legged dogs have usually been involved in some kind of ACCIDENT resulting in the severing of a LEG but sometimes they’ve been born with legs that, if you count them, just go up to THREE. Now dogs with FIVE legs are very rare…’

Christ save us from the drip drip drip of the jabbering obvious! Except he can’t help us escape it! Even he can’t help himself escape it because if a show isn’t presented by Clare Balding, people accuse the producers of skimping on their costs. Her big bold head has become so ubiquitous that every major live event looks like it’s being broadcast from Easter Island. And that’s where my enmity stems: from that enormous head.

She has the most suitable-for-outside-broadcast hair in the business, probably cast in an ironworks in Doncaster and modelled from photographs of the haircut that the late Princess of Wales wore in the 1980s. Except it isn’t the same haircut. It’s the same haircut on an industrial scale, modelled first in clay with thick channels to help the molten iron flow more evenly during the casting process and that big bold bastard parting hiding the inconvenient hole where the pig iron was poured in.

Had he been alive, Ted Hughes would now be writing children’s books about Clare Balding. The Iron Giantess with the unshakable head-girl confidence as she strides across the countryside, her hot exhaust gases slowly clogging our lungs until the whole nation is susceptible to her command. And it’s that confidence where my loathing ultimately crashes and breaks. It’s the pretence of normality that I can’t stand most about Clare Balding. The arrogance that people like her exude, that they should rise to the top simply because of who they are. She and her kind prove that we live in no meritocracy. She is where she is because she bleeds establishment blood. Daughter of a champion horse trainer who, along with her grandfather and brother, trained the Queen’s horses, she was at the same school as the equally loathsome Miranda Hart before she went to Cambridge and then the BBC gave shape to her modicum of talent.

She is the epitome of middle-class blandness disguising the reality that is upper-class ultra-chic lesbianism. She is our feudal lord and master. She is the crushing annihilation of every dream you might have had or hold, the death of the dreams of your children and their children’s children.

And that is why I can’t stand Clare Blanding, the destroyer of worlds.

21 comments:

The girl on the Racing UK channel (Lydia Hislop) might look as though she's carrying a bit too much extra weight, but the way she giggles when her hair and the newspaper she's carrying fly in all directions is extremely sexy.

She's self-effacing and fun, not some serious, arrogant twat. Which curiously enough, some women find to be interesting in men.

Thank you, sir. I'm afraid I'm not up to date with the Racing Channel so Lydia Hislop is a stranger to me. However, do I detect a certain breathless excitement about the way you describe her giggle? Could it be a hint of romance or merely the effect of the Twenty Rothmans?

I'll keep an eye out for her. No doubt she'll start to appear in non-horse-related TV. They usually do, which is usually when all the trouble begins...

Oh, Lozza, you’re forcing me to look into some very dark places... Do I really want to explain why I can’t stand Miranda? I know lots of people adore her but I know even more people who can’t bear the sight of her. That gormless big girl falling down routine just doesn't crack my pavement. But, then, what do I know? My comedy hell would be her and Michael McIntyre yet they’re the most popular comedians in the country.

Notice how Balding made a big thing about not commentating at a golf club that did not admit women, while she was perfectly happy to use her connections to go to an all woman Cambridge college Newnham where she got in with A levels far below those that anyone without her connections would need.

I came a cross this post as a result of my Google search "I hate Claire Balding". I was delighted to read this and Mr Self's peice you begin with reference too. I realised my own profound haterid for Balding some time ago, even before her ascention to the supposed rank of 'Nationl Treasure 'following the 2012 Olympics. It's her head. It's monstrous. The woman looks like a waxwork version of Dean Windass. Latterly, my distaine for the woman has reached new heights. The fact that an openly gay woman can happily present the Winter Olympics in a country so abhorrently intolerant of gay people, yet has the cheek to refuse to present from a golf club that does not allow female members speaks volumes. Shame on her.

I am not homophobic. I am not as clever or elloquent as some of the other contributors so i will keep it short.I detest this self promoting, irritating bull dyke deviant.. For some reason only ego driven overtDeviants seem to get high profile jobs interviewing and presenting potentially interesting shows.Are there any straight normal people apart from Paxman left asking questions ?

Agree sooooo much with you guys I absolutely hate claire balding everything she touches on tv I avoid like dog shit in the street the thing is she is FUCKING everywhere she's taking over its becoming balding UK every channel every radio station her father was an arsehole her brothers an arsehole and she's the biggest darkest hole of the lot how can anyone wanting to get into presenting on tv not coming from a silver spoon family background get anywhere it's the same greedy selfish twats taking every job!! And by the way she was the death of horse racing on channel four I've mistaken her for one of the runners many a time horsefacedfuck

Well I also chuck up if I catch Gardeners Question time on a Friday PM driving home. A pure example of Will Self's view of Radio 4. The funny thing is that the "jokes" are about alcohol invariably but of course referred to as a tipple, or some other hilarious word associated with booze.

What you never hear though is:

question: I bought a (any pot plant) and placed it (in the shade, in the sun, facing east etc) and it looks like its dying.

Thank you, Brightontrader. I nearly choked on my own laughter. Just when I was beginning to wonder if anybody still reads my rants, I realise that we might well be a nation of angry people muttering under our breaths at this vile rubbish. I do listen to Radio 4 but just when I start to enjoy it, they broadcast something about canal boats or village fetes and I want to jam my face into my keyboard. So thank you. I'm going to listen out for Gardener's World and see if it can get me angry enough to blog again.

Can't stand the woman. She's a typical upper class bully - all right dishing it out but can't take it. She thought it was smart to embarrass a Grand National winning jockey on his lack of teeth (lost in a worthy cause), but soon started bleating when she was referred to as the 'dyke on a bike'.

It won't be long before she is awarded a 'gong' of some description for upper crust toffery, and talking down to us poor peasants.

Just saw this again in my favorites and as it Happy New Year thought I would post to all you happy haters a suggestion; as I can't be bothered to start my own "I hate xxxx" blog, hows about I hate Chris Evans.

If you look on the internet there simply is not enough hate written about him, one has to stoop to reading the comments at the bottom of any Daily Mail article about him, plenty there but the quality is very low...and there are surprisingly a few from people who actually like him, so tainted..just enough to put you off reading them.

Why is it "national treasures" by and large (BBC ones that is) are so deliciously despisable? Chris Evans ticks a lot of hate boxes, smiles and shouts a lot, is perpetually cheerful, is disgustingly over paid, had Billie Piper..in her prime....and I could add, red hair but that would be colourist, which I am not.

However, the shining light this year is that he is going to crash and burn with Top Gear and this is going to be my hate highlight of 2016. I would love to watch it to savour the sheer joy of failure but am afraid of adding to his viewing figures, a dilemma that keeps me awake at night, whilst anticipating that is..

So any CE haters out there who want their own page to sell ads on please count me as a hit or 2.

And, also, great grammar to start with, why is it the media of radio and television where one would have ttought it was a pre-requisite to speak proper like what I do, everyone and their mother on the telly rolls their R's. In real life I have never ever come across anyone that does this but on the radio every traffic reporter, in particular, warns about twaffic hold-ups on this woad, this woundabout etc. Apart from the obvious one, Wossie, who has made a career out of it, currently or should I say cuwwently, we have Lucy Worsley advertising her BBC2 series about the pewils of being a Tsar in Wussia. Where is Wussia?

What a great article. I'm afraid (no I'm not) I always turn the telly off when the sanctimonious, arrogant and smug C. Balding opens her mouth. Never a cross word with anyone she interviews. Can she really be in tune with everyone she talks to, given her public school and closeted upbringing?Please, Channel 4, sack her and I can watch the racing in peace.